Discography - Beatrice Berrut

Latest album:

Jugendstil

Transcriptions and Paraphrases for piano

My first collaboration with refined French label La Dolce Volta.

How can one come to terms with being a pianist madly in love with Austro-German post-Romantic music, which forsook one’s instrument in favour of the orchestra?

Liszt

Late works for piano
Beatrice Berrut has been walking in the footsteps of Franz Liszt for over 20 years, and after exploring his mature works in Metanoia, and his concertante works in Athanor, it was during the dark period of concert halls’ lockdown that she matured her interpretation of Franz Liszt’s late works.

Liszt Athanor

Metanoia

Piano works by Franz Liszt
The world achieves a balance through those conflicting values. And he gives us too the right to be contradictory, inconsistent in our enthusiasms, changing in our moods.

Lux Aeterna

Visions of Bach
The contemplative nature of Bach’s music, its austerity, its simplicity, are deeply moving.

Robert Schumann

Love shrinks from no sacrifice, least of all from countless hours of work. I have dedicated my life to serving Liszt, and his precepts have naturally stimulated me to appropriate a wide range of repertory by means of paraphrase and transcription. Such insatiable curiosity is one of Liszt’s most striking personality traits, and his torch has guided me along a path strewn with doubts and epiphanies.

So, in practice, how to render the effect of the cowbells in the Andante moderato of Mahler’s Sixth Symphony? By incorporating harmonies typical of a carillon: the timbre is different, but the sound of the bell is suggested. How to render the intimacy of the string scoring in Schönberg’s Verklärte Nacht? That is impossible to achieve, which is why I chose to distance myself from the original work for string sextet, conceiving this paraphrase as a ‘mirror’ of the Liszt Sonata: a single- movement work for piano that invokes the symbolism of metamorphosis and explores the depths of the human psyche. In my version of Mahler’s Adagietto, I pay humble tribute to the Klavierstücke of Brahms, adding a piano accompaniment to underpin the long string sostenutos, which are almost impossible to play on the piano.

Liszt : Late works for piano

Beatrice Berrut has been walking in the footsteps of Franz Liszt for over 20 years, and after exploring his mature works in Metanoia, and his concertante works in Athanor, it was during the dark period of concert halls’ lockdown that she matured her interpretation of Franz Liszt’s late works.

His late works are strange, they explore new modes – in form as well as in tonality – and already prefigure the music of the 20th century, violent, percussive, or ethereal and repetitive.

The recording was made on the Bösendorfer Vienna Concert no.100 – an instrument she is particularly fond of and which she has already played for the recording of Athanor – in a concert hall built in the garden of Franz Liszt’s birthplace in Raiding, Austria.

As the recording took place during the strict lockdown in Austria, both the pianist and the sound engineer were staying in a castle belonging to the Esterhazy family. They were the only souls of the place, and the mists that stretched outside gave them the illusion that they were physically evolving in the limbo of this mysterious music. They would not have been surprised to see Liszt himself appear in an alleyway in the park in its winter slumber.

The flight connection between Vienna and Geneva being restricted to a few flights a week because of the pandemic, Beatrice Berrut returned to Switzerland by train. The 14-hour journey made her feel what travel in the 19th century could be like, and enabled her to return to the 21st century smoothly.

Liszt Athanor:

Piano Concertos no 1 & 2, Totentanz
Athanor: de התנור (ha tanur), the furnace used by alchemists in their search for the philosopher’s matter is indispensable for the maturation of the Great Work. By extension, this furnace, in the shape of a matrix, has become a symbol of their quest for perfection and the absolute. And that is where Liszt agreed with the alchemists. Eternally dissatisfied, he said that ‘the persistent search for the best possible characterises the true artist’. This search not only had an aesthetic dimension but was also of a moral order, as attest his homage to Paganini: ‘The artist’s role is to awaken and maintain in souls the enthusiasm and passion of Beauty, so close to the passion of Good’.

‘Go! You are one of the fortunate ones for you will bring joy and happiness to many others! There is nothing better or finer!’
Beethoven to eleven years old Liszt

Why bring together these three works on the same programme? All three were, of course, written for piano and large orchestra. However it seems to me that there is a strong link between them beyond form. Their joint particularity is their very long gestation: it took 23 years between the first sketch and public performance of the first Concerto, 22 years between the earliest sketches and definitive publication of the second, and 20 years between the rough draft of Totentanz and the version recorded here.

A twenty-odd years’ gestation
The twenty-odd years’ gestation that these works spent in Liszt’s athanor was evidently determining: without those years of doubt and constant rethinking of the first sketches, these concertos would never have come down to us in such accomplished form. Further proof – if any were necessary – that the creative process never ceased are the annotations in Liszt’s hand on the study scores of his student Hans von Bülow. Even once it was published, the work constantly evolved, and Liszt, admitting to having ‘the mania of variants’, traced measures, added notes, and thereby showed us that the path never ends . . .

Metanoia:

Piano works by Franz Liszt
Swiss concert pianist and Bösendorfer Artist Beatrice presents her latest album “Metanoia”, featuring chosen works by Franz Liszt. It will will take you on a journey through the mystical universe of the Hungarian composer, where both tremendous virtuosity and moving sincerity will be found. METANOIA (from the Greek μετάνοια): a mental transformation, a reorientation of one’s way of life.

In Carl Jung’s psychology, metanoia indicates a spontaneous attempt of the psyche to heal itself of unbearable conflict by melting down and then being reborn in a more adaptive form.

“The fullness and diversity of the piano sound that Beatrice Berrut produces on the piano is no less impressive than the virtuoso magic she unfolds.”
Klassik Heute Deutschland, Guido Krawinkel

What would light be without darkness?
The world achieves a balance through those conflicting values. And he gives us too the right to be contradictory, inconsistent in our enthusiasms, changing in our moods.
And he gives us too the right to be contradictory, inconsistent in our enthusiasms, changing in our moods. There is clearly a parallel between the metanoia, or transformation, that is to be observed in the works I have chosen for this programme – beginning with a struggle in the flames of Dante’s Inferno and ending with the contemplative ecstasy of the Consolations – and the radical shift in orientation that took place in the composer’s life: from seducer to canon, from a composer of rhapsodies to the author of the Bagatelle sans tonalité. The religious meaning of metanoia – a spiritual conversion – is also represented by his taking of holy orders and the episodes in his works that express religious devotion: the fourth of his Consolations, for instance, which is to be played “avec dévotion”. Liszt’s music is very complex in its message, and technically very demanding.

Tackling it is like being faced with a notoriously difficult mountain peak, the scaling of which demands great effort and involves moments of loneliness and desolation. But all the suffering of the ascent is then rewarded by the exhilaration of achieving the summit. We are left deeply transformed, enriched by what may prove to be a life-changing experience.

Lux Aeterna:

The contemplative nature of Bach’s music, its austerity, its simplicity, are deeply moving. In an age when appearance alone seems to matter, his music is as relevant as ever, inviting us to turn our gaze inward and ask those deep questions which, in spite of the passage of time, still persist. Piano transcriptions of works by J.S. Bach & Thierry Escaich Release: January 2015

“The Swiss pianist Beatrice Berrut ravishes the ear with the help of a superb Bösendorfer and first-rate recording. (…) This outstanding release ends with a veiled tribute to Bach, in the form of Thierry Escaich’s Trois études baroques. Great fun. Highly recommended.”
Jeremy Nicholas, Gramophone

Bach and his deeply sincere music are still inspiring composers nowadays. Thierry Escaich’s music taps the same roots as Bach’s. Indeed, his most recent work closely resembles that of the Cantor of Leipzig while bringing his own particular 21st-century shading and colouring to it with intricately embellished harmonies, fiendish rhythms and flashes of mystic fervour…

“I have deliberately chosen transcriptions by Busoni, Siloti and Kempff over works specifically scored for harpsichord because I feel these transcriptions build a bridge between Bach’s time and our own. It is proof positive of the universality and timelessness of his music that it can speak to all generations.”
Beatrice Berrut

Robert Schumann:

The 3 Sonatas for piano
Brilliant from start to finish, the collection of three Sonatas for piano by Robert Schumann represents some of the summits of Romantic piano music – yet, except perhaps for the Second, than Carnaval or the Fantasy which virtuosos love to include in their programmes. One is always swept away by the impetuous rush of the young German artist, as much as by the inherent urgency that touches the listener so directly, following in the footsteps of Beethoven (in terms of the form, albeit very freely) and Schubert (in its Romantic content).

“This is a mostly impressive debut recording by the Swiss pianist Beatrice Berrut (…) she has the work’s considerable technical difficulties entirely under control (…) She plays the second movement of the Third Sonata as expressively as Horowitz.”
Fanfare, Paul Orgel (USA)

These three sonatas were written in the 1830s, a period that saw Schumann’s genius flower, but also saw dramatic biographical events: the death of his sister Rosalie, a paralysis of his right hand that put an end to his promising career as a pianist, a romantic liaison that left him with an attack of syphilis, and a broken engagement with the daughter of a rich Bohemian baron… At the end of 1835, his love for Clara Wieck, thwarted by her father Friedrich Wieck, forced the couple to take legal action in order to marry, at last, in 1840. The personality of this young woman, born in 1819, haunts these three works.

“Send light deep into human hearts – the artist’s role!”
Robert Schumann, (1810 – 1856)

Liszt : Late works for piano

His late works are strange, they explore new modes – in form as well as in tonality – and already prefigure the music of the 20th century, violent, percussive, or ethereal and repetitive.

Liszt Athanor:

Metanoia:

In Carl Jung’s psychology, metanoia indicates a spontaneous attempt of the psyche to heal itself of unbearable conflict by melting down and then being reborn in a more adaptive form.

Lux Aeterna:

Robert Schumann:

“Send light deep into human hearts – the artist’s role!”
Robert Schumann, (1810 – 1856)

Latest album:

Jugendstil

Liszt

Liszt Athanor

Metanoia

Lux Aeterna

Robert Schumann

Public relations

Contact & Booking

Latest album:

Jugendstil

Liszt

Liszt Athanor

Metanoia

Lux Aeterna

Robert Schumann

Public relations

Contact & Booking

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Liszt : Late works for piano

Liszt Athanor:

Metanoia:

Lux Aeterna:

Robert Schumann:

Listen

Buy

Liszt : Late works for piano

Liszt Athanor:

Metanoia:

Lux Aeterna:

Robert Schumann: